Abstract
Collaboration between AI agents and humans in everyday
creative tasks is gradually becoming a routine. As a result,
the interaction design between humans and AI agents in
creative systems is playing an increasingly important role.
Seeing a need for more effective and natural communication
channels, this study addresses the question how implementing
facial expression awareness in a co-creative AI chat agent
influences the collaborative experience. To this end, we conduct
a comparative user study with ten participants. In two
separate ideation tasks, the participants explore the interaction
with the text-based AI prototype, once with and once
without facial expression awareness. We evaluate the collaborative
experience based on the adjusted Creativity Support
Index (CSI) and semi-structured interviews. Our results indicate
an enhancement of the collaborative experience when
interacting with a facial expression aware AI chat agent.
Given our findings, we compiled insights for the design and
implementation of facial expression aware AI agents.